


Here's to the Survivors

by TrenchcoatRats



Series: Nancy/Maggie Agenda [2]
Category: A Nightmare on Elm Street (Movies 1984-1994), A Nightmare on Elm Street - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gay Pride, Happy Ending, M/M, Trauma Sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:55:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25005019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrenchcoatRats/pseuds/TrenchcoatRats
Summary: Jesse's been attending New York City's Pride March for three years now and this year he meets someone new, that he's never met before in his life. But despite that, he knows her. Or rather, the memories of the serial killer that once possessed his body that he still carries in his mind know her.
Relationships: Maggie Burroughs | Kathryn Krueger/Nancy Thompson, Ron Grady/Jesse Walsh
Series: Nancy/Maggie Agenda [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810369
Kudos: 11





	Here's to the Survivors

**Author's Note:**

> Happy pride month everyone! I love Nightmare 2 and Nightmare 6 is my unfortunate problem child, so I wanted to combine the two with the end of pride month. This references Jesse's Lost Journal by Mark Patton, but you don't need to read it to understand this.

It should be impossible that any one person could be made out in this crowd. Jesse’s been going to NYC’s Pride March for only three years now, but the sheer volume of people that flood the streets completely blows his mind. He’d been afraid that first year, that if he saw all these mass groups of people, the part of his mind and self that’d been irreparably stained and damaged by Krueger would dehumanize them, turn them into a indistinguishable pool of targets for the glove he still feels on his hand some days. 

But it hadn’t happened. Instead, each person, all the thousands he saw and the hundreds of thousands he didn’t, was marked as a beautiful individual with their proud grins, interlocked hands, and bright outfits. He didn’t know their names or remember their faces, but they all were testaments to love and endurance. Seeing them all had him feeling for the first time since his life had become that nightmare of fear, that he could do this. That he could not continue to exist for days and weeks and years, but that he could _live_. That he could begin to heal, focusing not on his hurt, but on the love he had felt from those in his life and the love he still held for them. For Lisa, her gentle smile and hugs that still made his heart feel warm. For Grady, who’s teasing grin and love for teasing, physical affection could still bring a smile to Jesse’s lips more than a decade after his death and on his worst days.

He missed them both, in their own different ways, but he felt like he could focus more on the love, more on the present, rather than to continue to cycle through those terrifying days in Springwood. Amongst the crowd, he felt proud of being a survivor, he felt proud in himself and his feelings. The rainbow flag that he’d bought that day, that he held up and let flutter in the breeze, that he got to see every morning when he woke up in his apartment, was physical proof of that.

But his third Pride goes a bit differently. He sees someone, someone he’s never met before, but someone he _knows_.

She’s got brown hair, tied back and braided with lavender flowers, a blue sweatshirt with rolled up sleeves that she must be sweltering in that reads “I’m Into Survival”, with a double Venus symbol under the text. She looks around his age, maybe older, maybe younger.

He’s never seen her before. But he knows her.

He knows that her name is Kathryn, that she liked peanut butter and banana sandwiches, that her favorite game as a kid was tag.

He knows that picking her up was the easiest thing, made better when she would laugh and squeal as she was spun around. 

He knows that her last name’s Krueger.

He knows that she’s worn the glove.

He hasn’t had an onslaught of Freddy’s emotions or memories in a long time, whatever bastardized connection still lingered between them had been blessedly silent for years, but this floods his brain all at once, and for a fleeting minute any joy he’d been feeling is dashed and sullied with the realization that this was something he’d never be free from.

The idea that Freddy had a daughter, that he'd cared for in the closest to genuine humanity Freddy Krueger had ever gotten, is awful. The fact that Jesse now has these secondhand emotions and thoughts about someone he’s never met, her entire early childhood lovingly seared into his brain, is both distressing and the last thing he would ever expect to happen so far from Springwood. The idea that the glove apparently has a level of sentience, allowing identification of who’s worn it? Horrible, he’s not touching that one with a two-hundred foot pole.

She notices him staring, because of course she does. She smiles at him in a confused way and he’d never thought the daughter of a monster could appear so human.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare at you.” His voice cracks and he’s suddenly vividly aware of how dry his throat is. “I like your shirt.” He says lamely, not knowing what else to say.

Kathryn lights up. “Thanks! I made it myself, the quote’s something my girlfriend told me once.”

Hearing Kathryn say “girlfriend” jolts part of his body out of its panicked state. Kathryn isn't her father and though he may have part of her father’s memories, he really doesn’t know her at all. He gives her a smile and holds his hand out. “I’m Jesse.”

“Maggie,” she squeezes his hand once and gives him a more genuine smile.

It’s not the name she was born with, but the comfort with which she says it tells him that it’s her name, more than Kathryn ever was. It’s not like the fake name he used when he first came to New York, empty and aching and getting together with a man who looked too much like Grady for it to be unintentional on Jesse’s part. That name fit poorly, always feeling like it fumbled out of his mouth and sending a twinge of dissatisfaction to his heart every time someone called him that. Even as he was starting to come to terms with his sexuality, he felt suffocated and closeted.

He doesn’t know what he could say here that could be considered “normal” conversation, so he just rushes out, “Did you ever live in Springwood?”

Maggie tenses and drops her hand. She doesn’t look upset, just wary and confused. “How did you know that?”

The overwhelmingly loud glee that is the NYC Pride March seems an inappropriate backdrop for a conversation like this. 

“Is it okay if we talk over there?” He gestures to an open bar nearby, the rainbow flag displayed at its window.

Maggie shrugs in agreement and the two start to make their way over there.

Once they sit down, Jesse orders water. Maggie orders whiskey. There’s really no way to ease into this conversation.

“So...the reason why I asked you if you lived in Springfield was because back in 1986 I started having weird dreams. They kinda ended up with me, possessed by the spirit of The Springwood Slasher, killing my gym teacher, a bunch of kids at my school, and my best friend. And aside from the trauma of the whole situation, it left me with some...fragments of him that get jostled sometimes. Nothing serious, just memories or feelings mostly, but yeah. That’s why I was staring at you. Sorry, I know it sounds unbelievable, I promise I’m not lying.”

Maggie looks at him in silence for a moment before throwing her head back and downing her drink in one go. She lets out a ragged breath and one hand clenches tightly around the fabric of her sweatshirt. “When I was a little girl, I came out of my house’s basement to see my mother being murdered by my father. I didn’t understand at the time, but she had just discovered that he was a child murderer. After his death, I was taken into foster care and adopted out of Springwood with the memories of my childhood repressed near completely. I went to college, fell in love with a girl, and only a few years after that she was murdered by the spirit of my child murdering father. Twelve years later, I end up back in Springwood, have the children in my care disappearing from this world and from the memories of everyone else, remember my past, put on a pair of 3D glasses to pull my father out of the dream world, and somehow, that actually worked. So no, Jesse, that doesn’t sound all that unbelievable.”

He stares at Maggie in disbelief. “I knew it went beyond me, there was a diary left by a girl who lived in my house, Nancy, that detailed some of her own experiences but...I never thought it could get _weirder_ than what happened to me.”

Maggie snorts, “Trust me, I left out some of the weirder parts.” She stops suddenly and looks at him sharply. “You said ‘Nancy’...did you mean Nancy Thompson?”

For some reason, this is the biggest shock of the conversation. “You know her?”

“Yeah...she was my girlfriend. She’s dead now.” 

There’s clear pain in Maggie’s eyes as she says this, she may not be crying but Jesse can tell by the way she spoke, from the fact that the sweater she wears now must have been based off of Nancy herself, just how much she had loved Nancy. And to find out that her own father had murdered her girlfriend...the situations are different, no doubt, but it’s a fundamental betrayal on the level of what his body had been used for with Grady. 

He thinks of the state of Grady’s body that he’d been forced to see when he was given control back of his body and what that had done to him emotionally. He quickly wipes the tears forming away and drinks his water. “I’m sorry, Maggie.”

She smiles gratefully, “And I’m sorry you got possessed by the spirit of my father.”

When it’s said so casually, it’s almost funny. He thinks Grady would have snorted, if he’d heard it.

“This isn’t a nice question to be asked but...is he gone? Or…”

“Oh no, he’s dead for good.” Maggie says casually. “The 3D glasses that pulled him into the real world? When I stabbed him with his glove, that was real damage. When I stuck a pipe bomb in the wound and he exploded, there was no dream for him to duck back behind.”

He’s a bit hung up on the pipe bomb part, but decides against wanting to know how she got it. Instead he orders them both a drink, it’s the least he can do for the person who put Krueger in the grave for good.

Jesse raises his drink up for a toast, “To the survivors?”

Maggie smiles and clinks her drink against his. “To having sweet dreams.”

They sip at their drinks, the loud roar of the Pride March outside now a comfortable sound of the background through the closed door.

“Earlier,” Maggie says after setting her drink to the side, “you mentioned your best friend being one of the victims, what was his name?”

“Grady.” Jesse takes a second and exhales, before verbalizing the words he’s known in his heart for years. “I loved him.”

Maggie’s eyes are wet as she bites her lip. “Tell me about him? If you want to, of course.”

Jesse smiles, feeling lighter almost at the opportunity. “I’d like that.”

And he does. 

**Author's Note:**

> if i have to write Every Single fic in the maggie/nancy tag that i created i Will do it don't think i won't. these girls deserve some love.


End file.
